190 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



June 



our colonies in the order of their rat- 

 ing, beginning with the best: 



1 No. 25 154 10 No. 2 100 



2 No. 8 144 II No. 24 93 



3 No. 5 135 12 No. 30 74 



4 No. 6 130 13 No. 13 72 



5 No. 20 130 14 No. 28 66 



6 No. 17 124 I5-No. 1 65 



7 No. 11 122 16 No. 22 44 



8 No. 21 119 17 No. 27 43 



9 No. 12 lis 



This is by no means given as a per- 

 fect scheme. It may be that ten 

 pounds is not the right number 'to 

 count as the difference made by the 

 taking or giving of a frame of brood. 

 Por that matter it is not a fixed quan- 

 tity. It is no doubt more in a bumper 

 year than in a year of failure. It need 

 not be considered at all by one who 

 does not practice equalization of colo- 

 nies. The amount charged up for start- 

 ing queen-cells is arbitrary, and some 

 would consider it more serious, while 

 others might consider it of little im- 

 portance. Each one is at liberty to 

 make improvements on the plan or to 

 get up a better one. The likelihood, 

 however, is that no great mistake will 

 be made in breeding from No. 25, 

 which stands at the head of the list, 

 and if anything shiould happen to the 

 queen of No. 25, then No. 8 should be 

 taken to breed from, and so on down 

 the list. Incidentally it might be 

 mentioned that the queen of No. 27 

 would be a proper candidate for de- 

 capitation, as well as others near the 

 bottom of the list. 



The Evolution of Beekeeping 

 Practice 



BY G. S. DEMUTH 



(Continued from May) 

 In December, 1885, at the Detroit 

 convention, Mr. Heddon announced 

 the new Heddon hive and his book, 

 "Success in Bee Culture." The new 

 Heddon hive was designed especially 

 to meet the requirements of the con- 

 traction system. The length and 

 width remained the same as the 8- 

 frame Langstroth hive, but the depth 

 of the frames was reduced to 5j^ in. 

 in order to make eight of these shal- 

 low combs equivalent in capacity to 

 five Langstroth frames. It was ad- 

 vised that two of these shallow 

 brood-chambers be used during the 

 six weeks preceding the honey flow 

 for the strongest colonies, but at 

 other times the brood-chamber was 

 contracted simply by removing one of 

 them. Colonies not strong enough 

 for two sections of the brood-cham- 

 ber during the building-up period 

 were to be left on the one. 



Thus was accomplished the second 

 step in the reduction of the size of 

 the brood-chamber since the days of 

 Langstroth and Quinby. The con- 

 contractionists were using a hive 

 much smaller than that of which 

 Quinby wrote, as quoted above : 

 "Very satisfactory for the first sum- 

 mer, but in a year or two your little 

 hive is gone." 



Mr. Hutchinson was so enthusiastic 

 in regard to these new ideas in comb- 

 honey production and so apt as a 



teacher that he rapidly came to the 

 front as a leader. He began the pub- 

 lication of "The Beekeepers' Review" 

 in 1888, and the pages of the early 

 volumes of this journal are replete 

 with the new comb-honey methods. 

 At that time each issue of "The Bee- 

 keepers' Review" was devoted to a 

 special topic in beekeeping. The De- 

 cember, 1891 issue was devoted to the 

 subject, "What Shall We Do if Poor 

 Seasons Continue?" As was his prac- 

 tice, the editor wrote a "leader" for 

 the preceding issue, part of which I 

 quote : "In 1888 the average yield in 

 my apiary was 10 pounds per colony. 

 In 1889 it was 20 pounds, in 1890 not 

 one pound, in 1891 5 pounds. * * * 

 The honey stored in my apiary the 

 past four years would not have kept 

 us in food more than one year. I am 

 forced to believe that hundreds of 

 beekeepers could make a similar re- 

 port." After some remarks about 

 some changes in his location which 

 had been brought about by better ag- 

 riculture, he continued: "What puz- 

 zles me is that we had good crops for 

 ten years, then poor crops for four 

 years. It seems as though the cliange 

 ought to have been more gradual." — ■ 

 (The Beekeepers' Review, Vol. 4, pp. 

 298-299). Ten years later Mr. Heddon 

 told me, in person, in his own apiary, 

 that he had given up all hope of se- 

 curing another crop of .Honey in 

 Michigan, since there had been a 

 series of poor seasons in his locality 

 the past fifteen years. 



Among the contributed articles on 

 the remedy for poor seasons was one 

 by R. L. Taylor, the closing para- 

 graph of which follows : "I will close 

 with the suggestion of one other 

 possible remedy. In my home apiary 

 the past season I had one swarm for 

 about every twenty-five colonies, an 

 average of about 5 pounds of comb- 

 honey to the colony. But there was 

 one colony that cast a swarm and 

 gave a surplus of 75 pounds of comb- 

 honey over and above sufficient win- 

 ter stores for the two colonies. * * 

 * * There was no accession of bees 

 from other colonies nor any robbing. 

 Wherein was the power of this col- 

 ony? Was it from the fortuitous con- 



junction of conditions at the most fa- 

 vorable times so as to produce extra- 

 ordinary exertion at the nick of time? 

 Did it possess a secret knowledge of 

 some rich acre of clover in a sunny 

 nook? Or was it possessed of inbred 

 characteristics which gave it power 

 to excel? If in the first or last, as 

 seems most likely, we have in them a 

 rich field for explanation. He who 

 finds out how to time the conjunction 

 of conditions and to perpetuate the 

 most desirable characteristics will 

 abolish poor seasons, not simply find 

 a doul)tful remedy therefor." — (Bee- 

 keepers' Review, Vol. 4, p. 323). Taylor 

 here uttered a prophecy well worth a 

 most careful study by any beekeeper, 

 and which in the light of our present 

 knowledge helps to explain the series 

 of poor seasons in the clover region 

 and the decline in beekeeping in that 

 splendid honey producing area. 



I do not mean to infer that a reduc- 

 tion in the size of the brood-cham- 

 bers was the sole cause of the poor 

 crops secured at this time, but the re- 

 duction of the size of the hives cer- 

 tainly rendered the maintenance of 

 the colonies in a prosperous condition 

 much more difficult, especially during 

 adverse seasons. The reduction of 

 basswood and the growing importance 

 of alsike clover made it necessary to 

 have the colonies strong much earlier 

 than was previously necessary when 

 the colonies built up on white clover 

 and secured a crop of surplus honey 

 from basswood. That the failures 

 were not so much the fault of the sea- 

 sons as that of management is sug- 

 gested by Mr, Taylor the very next 

 year, 1892, as follows : "In the leanest 

 of the late lean years every colony 

 that cast a swarm as soon as 

 the first opening of the white clover 

 has given me more than an average 

 amount of surplus comb-honey, and 

 by that I mean more than an average 

 in good seasons. For it has come to 

 be a fond dream of mine that all 

 reasonably good colonies having good 

 queens can be brought to the swarm- 

 ing point by that time." — (The Bee- 

 keepers' Review, Vol. 5, p. 267). Here 

 Taylor sees the possibilities of a 

 "conjunction of conditions" designed 



The divisible hive composed of shallow frames was advocated by Heddon, and for a time was 

 quite popular. Beekeeping rapidly declined in Michigan after this hive came into general use. 



